


Our Way Back

by Wiseskylight



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Jason Todd is Red Hood, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Superman Clark Kent, Time Travel, Tumblr: Jason Todd Rare Pair Challenge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:47:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26113672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wiseskylight/pseuds/Wiseskylight
Summary: It was an accident. Jason never meant for this to happen, never meant to be stuck in the past... and never meant to meet pre-Superman Clark Kent. But what about all the things that came after?
Relationships: Clark Kent/Jason Todd
Comments: 9
Kudos: 71
Collections: Jason Rare Pair Challenge





	Our Way Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firefright](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefright/gifts).



It should have been simple.

An infiltration mission with the aim of eradicating Gotham’s newest crime syndicate. Something Jason had done many times before, so often that the tally marks of his victories would not fit on A2 paper. This should have been the same. The plan was easy enough– enter the group, gather their secrets and use that to destroy them. Sometimes, Jason didn’t even need to collect their secrets. A lot of gangs were predictable, always after the same thing - a chunk of cash to fill their small and hungry pockets. Even loose coins would do. That’s what desperation and greed did to the world.

It never surprised Jason when people – ordinary, nameless people – turned to a life of crime. Not after they’d had their first taste of what it truly meant to live outside the law. How the quick money they had made promised a life free of indigence, hunger, and their poverty-wage jobs. He had seen it happen countless times before. Back in Crime Alley, gang members would approach strangers on the street with promises of earning hundreds of dollars if they just followed a few simple instructions. A lot of people would fall for it, especially the children that the local city council failed to protect. They would reach for that promised future with desperate hands, and at that moment they were trapped, the crimes they committed chasing that empty dream more than enough to ensure they could never leave. Not unless they wanted to see their lives pass by behind prison bars.

“You’re a nihilist,” Roy had once told him in between bites as he scarfed down a cheeseburger.

The red-haired man had dragged Jason to one of his favourite fast-food joints; a cheap, dingy place filled with low lights and empty seats. Every now and again, Jason would spot the occasional fly whizzing around until it died under the many – too many – electric zappers. None of it seemed to faze Roy in the slightest as he happily ate his fries smothered in mayo.

“Always seeing the bad parts of human nature,” Roy continued, a small dollop of sauce on the side of his lip. “But what about the good, huh? That ‘everyone is capable of being a decent person’ stuff. What about them?”

“Even they can be corrupted,” Jason replied, picking out the wretched pickles from his own burger. “Anyone can. Just give them the thing they desire most.”

Roy snorted but said nothing else.

Thankfully, Kori was not there with them. As much as he loved the woman, she never let Jason’s views go without a challenge. Her bubbling optimism refused to allow him to dwell in ‘negative’ beliefs, so she tried to change them. Tried to change _him_ . Gave examples of the good – the everyday heroes, the ones _without_ superpowers. The good samaritans who went out of their way to help when and where they could. But Jason had seen too much of the bad to accept that the good outweighed it, and her attempts to change his world-view only ended up frustrating her and greatly amusing him.

But the mission…

The Hourglass, they called themselves. The organisation that should have been made up of inexperienced killers and everyday thieving thugs. They had first appeared on Jason’s radar when a small-time member decided to rob a gas station. 

Jason had been refuelling his bike, dressed in nondescript civilian clothes when he spotted an agitated looking man walking repeatedly back and forth near the main entrance. Every time he got close to crossing the threshold, he would seem to catch cold feet and walk away. But every few minutes he’d return and the cycle would repeat. As Jason watched he noticed the man continuously glancing at the shop door, his right hand fingering his jacket pocket like a talisman – reassuring himself that whatever object he carried with him was still there.

 _He’s got a gun_ , Jason thought as a sigh exited his mouth.

He finished refuelling his bike and started walking towards the store to pay. The sight of another customer drawing close must have triggered something within the man and he began to follow. Both entered the shop, one behind the other. The shop itself was shabby and silent, no other customers this time of day and Jason sent up a brief thanks for small favours; civilians just got in the way. 

He approached the lone occupant of the store – a bored looking woman who stood standing behind the counter with an expression of profound disinterest – but before he was able to ask about the gas the disinterest turned to shock, brown eyes widening and her mouth dropping open.

On the counter next to the woman was a hotdog machine. Jason glanced into its surface, the mirror-like metal reflecting the shop behind him, the short, stubby man who followed him in, and the gun he had just drawn in full view. A gun which was now pointed at the back of Jason’s head.

“G-Give me money,” the man spluttered out in a comically high voice that made Jason want to laugh at him. “Or I-I’ll shoot him!”

In fact, Jason wanted to laugh at the whole situation, the utter ridiculousness of it all. But that would probably only make things worse, so he settled for watching the man’s reflection as the cashier hurried to open the till. _Rachel_ , her name tag said. Not that it mattered much, but he did pity her and the sudden experience of robbery that she would live with. He wondered if she’d ever been robbed before. Judging by the way her hands shook, probably not. He wasn’t sure what she was so scared about anyway. It’s not like _she_ was the one with the gun pointed at her head.

“H-hurry,” the man said nervously, balding head shining under the neon lights, wisps of hair clinging to his sweat-drenched face. 

_He’s terrified,_ Jason thought to himself, and examined the man curiously. He looked more like a used car salesman than a hardened criminal – the kind that tried to sell people cheap, piece of shit cars with missing parts.

His dress shirt was expensive but too small, buttons fighting a losing battle to cover the overhang of his stomach and looking like they were about to fly off in the attempt. His clothes were rumpled, stained like he’d been sleeping in them for days, dirt clinging to his trousers. Had the man been sleeping rough? Kicked out of his house by an angry wife and onto the street?

Well, he probably deserved it anyway; the guy looked like a dickhead. Also, he was robbing a convenience store, so.

The man shifted suddenly, hand shaking around the gun and nerves clearly on the rise. The movement brought the back of his hand into view and Jason glimpsed the angry, red inflammation of a classic skin infection. The dark ink of a tattoo stained the reddened skin and Jason understood at once that the man was new both to tattoos and the art of robbery.

_First-time robbery, eh? Poor bastard._

Normally, Jason did not care about what drove people to commit crimes. All he cared about was stopping them before they went too far. Before someone got killed. But something about this one hit differently... The man obviously didn’t want to be there – hell, he looked like he was about to burst into tears. Jason has seen dogs with less guilty expressions.

And then there was the tattoo. If he was sleeping on the streets, why spend money on one? Things weren’t adding up.

Rachel had finished opening up the till and bagging up the money, placing it in clear plastic bags with the store name scrawled across them. She set it all on the counter and then stood still, not daring to move further. Smart girl. If Jason had to compare her to an animal, she would be an opossum trying to play dead. But that was okay. Sometimes playing dead is what kept you alive.

Jason had no such reservations. He wasn’t a ‘possum, he was a rattlesnake. And this asshole just stepped on his tail.

Behind him, he heard the man release a sigh of relief, watched his reflection move towards the bag, gun dipping down as he stepped forward. It was the moment Jason had been waiting for and he pivoted just as the man took another step, spinning around and grabbing the man’s wrist, twisting it painfully upwards and redirecting the bullet’s deadly trajectory towards the ceiling. A gunshot like thunder reverberated through the store and a scream came from behind the counter, but Jason didn’t bother with any of that. 

Instead, he slammed the blade of his hand into the man’s throat, which very helpfully caused him to let go of the gun and it clattered uselessly onto the floor. Jason kicked it away without much thought.

The stubby man's legs buckled as he struggled to breathe and he soon collapsed to his knees with his hand to his throat. But Jason still had the man’s other wrist in a firm grasp and he jerked his arm forward, getting a good look at the tattoo.

The image of an hourglass was clearly engraved into the skin on the back of his hand and despite the obvious infection, it looked expensive. The line art was sleek, intricately done and filled with the colour gold. This was no cheap, fifty dollar tattoo done in a junkie’s basement with a dirty needle and the promise of disease. This was high-quality.

“Pl-please,” the man wheezed out, turning Jason’s attention back towards him. “Let me- you have to let me take the money.”

The man’s desperation was obvious, because no one robbed a convenience store in broad daylight without being desperate, but it wasn’t the typical stealing-money-for-the-sake-of-it desperation. It was the life or death type.

Jason could tell the difference.

“Why?” Jason growled, tightening his grip on the man’s wrist. “Why do you need the money?”

The man’s right eye began to twitch uncontrollably, and his breathing became shallow. “T-they told me-”

“Who told you?” Jason demanded. In the background, he could hear Rachel talking frantically to the police.

“The Hourglass...”

Before he could ask any more questions the man passed out cold and Jason was left wondering what the hell all that was about. _The Hourglass told him?_ He thought it over as he tied up the culprit with some camping rope nicked off the shelf, then scrammed before the police arrived. Cops asked too many questions.

He rode off still wondering what the man had been babbling about. How could a tattoo tell a person to rob a store? Maybe he’d been delusional; a lot of criminals in Gotham were. A little cocaine up the nose or some crystal meth in the vein and they’d swear they could talk to Jesus, and also Jesus told them to commit arson.

But the guy hadn’t seemed crazy, just terrified. None of it made any sense and it frankly bothered the hell out of him.

Turns out Jason didn’t much like having the hell bothered out of him so naturally it all resulted in him using his IT skills to hack the gas station CCTV system, like you do. He ran a facial recognition scan, hoping to identify the culprit. It took a bit but eventually a ping - the sound of sweet success - echoed through the safe house, pulling him away from his fifth re-reading of _Jane Eyre_ , which bugged him because he’d just gotten to a good part. He placed the book down and scooted his chair closer towards the desk. Finally, right there on the laptop screen, was a name to go with the terrified face.

 _Alistair Crown_ , the report said, which was a great name for a supervillain and a shit name for a failed gas station robber. Underneath the man’s name was all other identifying information such as age, address, and medical history, but it was the newest addition of a police file that really hooked his attention.

 _The Missing Alistair Crown Found_ , it said. He opened it.

_Case Number: 569785123_

_Date: 18 January 2020_

_Reporting Officer: Deputy Smith_

_Incident Type: Robbery_

_Address of Occurrence: 458 XXXX, XXXX, XXXX_

_Witnesses:_

_Rachel Garcia: Employee, Female, 25, Latino_

_Unknown: Unknown, Male, Unknown, Caucasian_

_Evidence:_

_Indoor surveillance footage_

_Fingerprints (taken from the weapon)_

_Weapon/Objects Used: Pistol/Firearm_

_On January 18, 2020, at approximately 13:29, Alistair Crown entered a gas station store and attempted to steal $287 from the register at gunpoint. The store’s security camera recorded the incident as Alistair pointed a handgun at an unknown customer. Using the customer as a hostage, he demanded Garcia give him the money from the register. However, the unknown customer was able to fend off the assailant before any further damage was done. “The customer just hit the guy with the gun,” Garcia said in her witness statement, “then walked away after tying him up”._

_Deputy Smith arrived on scene at around 14:02, responding to Garcia’s 911 call. After reviewing the security footage, Crown was instantly arrested and taken into custody._

_Crowns currently refuses to cooperate and has invoked his fifth amendment right._

_Notes:_

_This case arrived a week after Alistair Crown was declared missing by his wife, Julia Crown. A missing person’s report was filed and given to Deputy James to investigate. No leads were found until today._

_Bearing similarities to case 515852601 and case 254211220, Crown was found with an hourglass tattoo on the back of his right palm._

_Further investigation underway._

Jason blinked in surprise and quickly looked through the other two cases. The report was right. The assailants in the other two incidents were declared missing persons before being found committing crimes, all three of them with the same tattoo. 

The whole thing stank of coercion, that was obvious. The real question was who. Who went around kidnapping people, tattooing their hands and sending them out to commit crimes? The hourglass tattoo was his only lead.

Well, he’d worked with less before. Jason decided to examine other missing persons’ reports in the past week. Maybe there were other similarities...

Jason had believed the case would be like all the others he had dealt with.

That was his first mistake.

**Author's Note:**

> Thought about doing the Jason Todd rare pairing challenge! Also, this fic is a gift to the amazing firefright. Love their work! I completely recommend them. 
> 
> There will be more info on what happened on the mission in the next chapter! Feel free to give your thoughts!


End file.
